You know when something is so wonderful that you have a hard time finding words to describe it? Well, that’s me, trying to write about the Regenerating Retreats held at Herdade da Ferraria. Every time one of these retreats ends I feel overwhelmed with joy, hope and strength, energised despite all the work and looking forward for the next one.

The concept

Most of us live very busy and demanding lives. We feel the pressure of our work life, our family obligations and societal demands, and more often than not our own personal needs get left behind. Sometimes we don’t even know what those needs are. The Regenerating Retreats were idealised to reset your body, mind and spirit. A fresh start. A Regeneration. During a week we provide the right environment for you to let go of things that don’t matter any longer, emotional or physical toxins that have built up in your physical and subtle body, while also reintegrating healthier habits and providing the necessary support and tools to help you keep these positive changes when you return home.

The core team

During the retreat you’ll have access to private sessions with a caring group of therapists:

Alexandra Degryse, our dedicated Health Coach, Nutritionist and Naturopath and the main organiser of these retreats;

Along with these three magical ladies, there’s a rotating team of energy healers, masseuses, manicures and pedicures, that make this a one of a kind experience to truly renew yourself, inside-out.

Finally there’s me, in charge of everything food and cooking related. I work in tandem with Alexandra providing nutrient packed meals and teaching you all the essentials of a plant based cuisine.

The place

The Olive Grove House at Herdade da Ferraria is a beautiful place, rooted in sand dunes and surrounded by eucalyptus and pine trees. The two-storey recovered farm building has 6 suites, an infrared sauna, an open living room, dining room and kitchen, with plenty of outdoor areas and a pool for you to relax and enjoy nature.

The practicalities

The retreat starts on a Sunday afternoon and it last until Friday at lunch time. During these five nights you experience daily yoga, meditation and cooking classes, long and short hikes at the beach, through the forests and up the mountains, organic plant-based meals (this is where I come in, by the way), a liquid day, because your digestive system also needs to rest a bit, massages, energetic healing sessions and personalised health coaching. Although it might seem like a busy schedule there’s also plenty of time for sleeping, including napping which is considered crucial to help integrate the whole experience, hanging by the pool, reading, enjoying the infrared sauna and chromotherapy.

Ready to join us? Head over to my Events page to book your place! I hope to see you soon.

Many of you asked me for the recipe of the sweet potato and chestnut purée that I have been doing and posting on Instagram over the past weeks, so here it is.

This is a very filling dish and I find that it works best with roasted or broiled light vegetables, such as fennel. It also makes a sweet treat when blended with cacao powder or mixed with maple syrup, sprinkled with cinnamon or lightly flavoured with vanilla.

Sweet potato and chestnut purée

4 medium yellow sweet potatos, whole and very well washed500g chestnuts500ml almond milk, or other non-flavoured plantbased milkSalt to taste

Pre-heat the oven to 200ºC. Pierce the sweet potatos, wrap them in foil or baking paper and place them in the oven to bake for 1h-1h30 or until soft. In the meantime, make a small cut on the chestnuts and boil them in salted water for 30min or until soft. Drain and peel the chestnuts, both the thick peel and the thin one. Once the potatos are soft, peel them and place in a blender, along with the chestnuts and half of the milk. Season with salt and blend until smooth. Keep adding milk until you reach the desired consistency. Serve warm.

Most people call Okonomiyaki a Japanese pizza. I think it’s more like a Japanese pancake. A good thing is that you can have both pancake and pizza for breakfast.

Okonomiyaki’s main ingredients are cabbage, flour, eggs, bacon and a lot of toppings like mayo, sweet sauce, seaweed and fish flakes. Here, I’m mixing cabbage with fennel for more aroma, using rice and tapioca flour instead of wheat flour, ditching the bacon for some sprinkles of smoked paprika and making my own homemade avocado mayo.

This is the kind of recipe that looks like it’s not going to work, in all sorts of ways. You will wonder if eggs and cabbage make a good food combination or how will all the veggies stick together to form a solid pancake. Let me give you a few tips on the latter.

First, your cabbage and fennel have to be very finely shredded. If you don’t own a food processor you have to put your knife skills to use. Then, it is crucial to have everything very well mixed before cooking, and last, a non-stick frying pan is recommended (much better than a cast iron one).

Mix the cabbage, fennel, flours and salt in a bowl, until the vegetables are well dusted with the flour. In a separate bowl, beat the eggs lightly and add them to the vegetables. Stir very well, until all the flour is incroporated. Heat a drizzle of olive oil in a non-stick frying pan and pour the mixture, pressing and flatening well all over the pan with the back of a spoon or a spatula. Let it cook at medium heat for 5-7 minutes or until golden. Grab a plate and slide the pancake to the plate, flip it over and return it to the frying pan to cook the other side.

Avocado mayo

1 avocado, ripe2 tsp wholegrain mustard2 tsp lemon juicePinch of salt

Place all ingredients in a blender and process until smooth. If needed add some olive oil to achieve the consistency of mayo. Pour into a squeezing bottle and refrigerate until ready to serve.

To serve

Toasted flaked almondsFresh chives, finely choppedSmoked paprika

Drizzle the avocado mayo on top of you pancake, sprinkle with the toasted almonds, chives and a sprinkle of smoked paprika. Serve immediatly.

It sounds like a contradiction having something that is instant and homemade, specially when it comes to broth making. Yet, this is exactly that and it is my go to comfort food - or should I say drink - when I’m in need of some warmth and a cup of tea just isn’t satisfying enough.

The idea is to add to nutritional yeast your favourite dried herbs, veggies and spices. I’m using dried shiitakes as my main flavour and keeping both powdered garlic and onion out, making this suitable for Sattvic diets.

It was a warm summer morning when scrolling through my Inbox I saw the subject “Portuguese Land Rovers” an e-mailsent by Huckberry, a long-time guilty pleasure newsletter (it’s 99% focused on outdoorsy men stuff…), that makes me crave for adventures and wild expeditions.

I remember perfectly the mix of curiosity, excitement and pride when I clicked to read it. “A Portuguese brand on Huckberry’s Journal? A-mazing!” I thought. I had previously seen some Portuguese brands being sold at Huckberry’s online store, but this was a proper feature on Cool & Vintage, a company dedicated to restoring vintage Land Rovers.

Fast-forward a few months and a couple of reciprocate courtesies, and Zé Pedro Alvarez, Cool & Vintage’s talented photographer suggested we meet.

“Let’s do something, you know, with one of our jeeps, and your food and wandering spirit, in Arrábida” he said. I obviously replied “Of course!”, not exactly knowing what that “something” meant.

So I kind of went with the flow, trying to keep up with all the coolness of the situation. Along with Zé Pedro came the brand’s CEO and Founder Ricardo Pessoa, both armed with a couple of small but still intimidating cameras.

I wasn’t sure if we were supposed to take the food on the jeep, or if we were to only do a photoshoot inside, so I decided to make a simple soup and a couple of desserts, one a bit fancier than the other, both quite experimental/improvised, everything very seasonal.

The task at hands was to cook something that resonated with my style of cooking but also with their brand image, good enough to eat and pretty enough to take photos, while keeping an interesting conversation with two persons I’ve never met before AND trying to (barely) look good - myself and the kitchen - for the gazillion photos they were taking.

I failed miserably on the quantity of food and my hair looked messy after the cooking session but everything else went kind of well. At the end of the day I think they left hungry but happy.

It was a delight to get to know and chat with both Zé Pedro and Ricardo. The two have very distinct personalities and life paths, they love what they do and for me that’s the greatest inspiration. They put a great deal of attention in all sorts of details, being the jeeps they restore or the pictures they take of them, carefully constructing the right setting, to evoke the right feeling.

That feeling you are probably feeling right now, the one where you can picture yourself leaving all the business of your life, get inside this Land Rover and take the Freedom road towards Summerland.

And if by any chance you decide to take action on your feeling, I hope you have the time to make and pack a thermos of the soup we had on this day.

Celeriac and Chestnut soup

150g chestnuts, previously boiled or roasted and peeled250g celeriac, peeled and roughly diced2-3 cups of water or homemade vegetable stock1 small piece of Ceylon cinnamonSalt and pepper to taste

Place all the ingredients into a medium size pan, bring to the boil and simmer for about 30 minutes or until the chestnuts and celeriac are very soft. Remove the cinnamon piece and process the soup until smooth. I like to use the smoothie’s blender for this but a hand blender will work as well. Return the soup to the pan and re-heat without boiling.

Melt the ghee on a grilling pan and add the mushrooms and sage. Fry for a couple of minutes, season with salt and set aside. Place the bread slices on the pan and grill for a few minutes on each side. In the meantime, pour the soup in bowls, place a spoonful of mushrooms on top and finish with the orange zest. Serve immediately with a slice of grilled bread.

It’s been a bountiful fig season this year. After eating them freshly picked for breakfast, lunch and dinner, having them in salads and tarts, I decided to use the last ones on the fig tree to make a chutney.

A chutney by definition is a condiment that consists in a reduction of fruit, vinegar and sugar. For this one, along the figs I used red onions and raisins as the “fruit base” and a mix of ginger, lemon zest, cinnamon, cloves and peppercorns for extra flavour.

I’ve been eating this chutney with Ayurvedic kind of food, like red lentil daal, kitchari, vegetable curry or with plain basmati rice and steamed vegetable. You can also have it on a piece of toast, with cheese or meat.

In a medium saucepan, heat the olive oil and cook the onion until very soft. Add the remaining ingredients except the figs and cook for 10-15 minutes. Add the figs and cook for 30 minutes. To reach the desired consistency use the hand blender to process the mixture (I prefer this than to cook it longer), leaving some chunks for texture. Pour the chutney into sterilized jars and cover with lid while still hot.

Convenience seems to make our decisions for us, trumping what we like to imagine are our true preferences.

— The Tyranny of Convenience by Tim Wu for The New York Times Opinion section

I was talking to a friend who had recently started riding her bike to work instead of driving her car. She was delighted. Using the car had been very efficient and convenient so far but now with the bike everything had changed for the better. She was exercising, enjoying the outdoors, feeling the wind in her face, noticing more things around her, stoping by places she wouldn’t be stoping if she was driving a car, because you know, parking, traffic, convenience.

When I was living in Scotland there would be times when I also opted for not driving my car, even when it was freezing cold, and walked instead because I wanted to make time for listening to all my favourite podcasts.

I’m using the car as an example here but there are so many occasions when convenience sneaks into our lives in the name of efficiency outshining things that make us happier, healthier and wealthier. In the food industry I find convenience almost insulting. Ready-made meals, peeled and chopped fruit, washed salad leaves and grated carrots, are a few examples of how we could be happier cooking a homemade meal because cooking can be a relaxing and joyful activity, healthier by chopping our fruit as needed, since peeling and chopping in advance contributes to the loss of vitamins, and wealthier given the abusive price for a ready to use packed salad versus buying a lettuce and a couple of carrots and doing it yourself. Not to mention all the packaging.

It was hard to choose just one quote from this article and I strongly recommend you to read the full version here.